Messy but Meaningful: 2024 at Laurelbank Farm

When I look back on 2024, I hope I will see it as a year of useful progress. But from where I sit now (barely out of 2024) it feels like another messy year of just-about surviving. There were some major life upheavals in 2023 - so I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s taking me a while to get myself on track again. But I long for clarity-of-purpose and the ability to focus - something that has been missing for a while.

I used to do these annual reviews regularly. I was running a different business (it was called The Edible Flower) with my (now ex) wife. I find it surprising and delightful, how many people still stop me to say how much they enjoyed those annual updates - full of “boring” reality, numbers, graphs and charts, sprinkled with some brutal honesty about what it’s really like, trying to run a small business.

I find it hard to be so brutally honest now. So much of my life in the last 2 years has been about rebuilding things after my split with my ex and I can’t tell you all about that - because that wouldn’t be fair to her or our kids. So how about I put that all behind me, and start from a new beginning…

Introduction

My name is Jo Facer. I am 42 years old. I moved to Northern Ireland in 2016 with the hope of setting up a microbrewery but got distracted by my love of food and eating - which led me to discover the joys of growing food.

I have always loved soil. I recently fell in love with plants. I continue to learn to understand and like humans – but I find soil and plants much easier to deal with!

I live at Laurelbank Farm, 121 Middle Road - a 7-acre small-holding about 10 miles south of Belfast in the hills of County Down. I’ve been growing vegetables here for 8 seasons. I am not a vegetarian - but I eat a lot of veg. It is a lovely place to live and work.

Working in the kitchen during our Mexican Irish Supper Club with Eileen from Moreish Good Food.
Photo by Sharon Cosgrove Photography.

For the last three seasons (starting in 2022) I’ve run a community supported agriculture scheme (a “CSA”) known as Farm & Feast. This is basically a vegetable box scheme which aims to share the highs and lows, the risks and rewards of growing with its members. I want our members to feel the joy I feel from growing food and knowing the land and the seasons and the soil.

I also run various other events - such as hosting community groups, weaving and brewing workshops, and even the odd music gig from the farm. I run the occasional supper club and I’m about to start my third year of teaching adults to grow-their-own organic fruits and vegetables - over a 30-week course, known as Growing Academy.

And in 2023 I started the process of turning the farm into a social enterprise - i.e. a non-profit organisation with social and environmental benefits at its heart.

It all sounds rather fabulous doesn’t it. So why do I struggle to know what to do each winter – why is it often so hard to find the energy to keep going… 

Students from The Growing Academy weeding the vegetable beds.

A Small Farm Future?

I passionately believe that small scale organic farming is awesome. I believe that as a species we should be producing nutritious, delicious food in a way that doesn’t prevent future generations from doing the same. I feel that small scale farming has so much to offer back to people beyond just food. It’s a way to give us autonomy over our diets, a way to adapt to climate change, a place to work, relax or play, a place to meet and celebrate - somewhere to learn to work with nature, to understand the interconnectedness of all things - to feel totally insignificant and mightily powerful all at the same time. (Read A Small Farm Future by Chris Smaje if you want the in-depth analysis)

But after 8 years of growing, of careful experimenting, of diligent record-keeping and steady improvements, I still can’t make it add up. In 2024 Farm & Feast brought in an income of £25k. But it cost me £36k. That’s a loss of £11k. And it’s the same every year – I expand, things get a bit bigger and better, but I still make a loss – a real loss – thousands of pounds that I have to earn some other way to cover the veg-growing deficit.

And I’m not the only one struggling. I’ve read several stories this year of people in a similar situations finally throwing in the towel.

So, 2025 is the year I finally admit defeat! I will not beat myself up anymore for failing. I will not apologise for subsidising something that I believe is the right thing to do. But also, I will not give up. Growing nutritious and delicious vegetables is and will continue to be at the heart of the farm, but I will do it at a scale I can afford to do. I will continue to learn, to improve my soil and to enjoy the literal and metaphorical fruits of my labour.

Despite the commercial challenges of farming there are many reasons to feel positive.

Early in 2024 we hosted an event at the farm talking about the future of community farming. One moment stood out to me. I was saying that linking up with other farms was valuable and powerful as we would then have a better chance of changing the world one day. And Lee Robb (one of the founders of Carrick Greengrocers and generally an inspiring women of awesomeness) told me I was changing the world. Right then! That very day – by just doing what I was doing – struggling along – but changing the world. That made me very happy.

One of our 2025 Farm & Feast Saturday gatherings

In the middle of 2024, I saw Chris Packham speak about environmental activism. And that made me realise my farming was activism. He mentioned Motivation, Method and Message.

I have the motivation – I desperately want to be able to feed myself and my fellow humans in a just and sustainable way. I’m motivated by the fact 2024 was the year global temperatures went above the 1.5*C increase that we’d set ourselves in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. We have messed up! (The realities of this are really so scary I can see what so many of us just want to ignore the realities of it - more heatwaves, more floods, rising sea levels - humans not able to grow food - more famines, more wars.)

I have a method – that’s my community farm, my education programme and CSA.

But I’ve been a bit quiet on the message. I guess I assume that everyone knows why I feel so strongly about this. And I feel like since 2022, the start of Farm & Feast, I’ve lost my confidence and have failed to really tell the world about why we’re doing what we’re doing. Hopefully I’ll put that right in 2025. A few more blog posts - a bit more “why” chat on Instagram.

At the end of 2024 I went to a conference about community - Future is Here conference in Carrick town hall. It was inspiring and thought provoking. I left desperately wanting to set up a repair café at the farm (email me if you agree and want to help). And it reminded me that community is everything. I left the conference with this in my head… ‘If we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we act as individuals, it will be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, and it might just be in time.’

Photo by Sharon Cosgrove Photography. Jo and Eileen from Moreish Good Food hosting a supper club

There are many ways to get involved and support Laurelbank Farm. You might become a CSA member, a Growing Academy student, you might join Willow Club, or come and volunteer on the farm. There are supper clubs and workshops to attend, a bigger and better farm shop to visit this summer – and don’t forget that something as small as mentioning us to a friend or liking a post on Instagram is still an act of support. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Thank you Margaret Mead for saying this back in 2001.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has”

Of course, us humans love that quote (or maybe it’s just me!) because it reminds us that we can have power to change things, even when we don’t have political power, or fame or fortune to back it up - It’s just like growing a cabbage from a tiny little cabbage seed - another brilliant reminder that big things start small.

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Enjoying soda farls cooked over the fire after a morning spent harvesting